The American way
American brewer Garrett Oliver tells Lucy Britner why Americans get food and beer right
Garrett Oliver is brewmaster at Brooklyn Brewery, New York. He travels the world talking about beer and food matching and has written a book called The Brewmaster's Table: Discovering the Pleasures of Real Beer with Real Food. He says that "food is the future - it's where the rubber meets the road."
Garrett believes America is ahead of Britain in the beer and food stakes because American brewers make a broader range of beer styles than British brewers.
Why do you think America is ahead of the UK when it comes to beer and food matching?
Although we look to Britain for wonderful cask styles, American brewers make a much broader range of beer styles than British brewers. This gives our beers the ability to work with almost any food likely to show up on the dinner table. Brooklyn Brewery will brew beers in 15 different styles in a year - so I can match sushi as well as I can match dessert.
What are they key things to remember when matching food and beer?
The first thing to remember is balance. The beer and the food should be well matched when it comes to "impact on the palate".
For example, a typical Indian lager simply washes down a nice Madras curry, whereas a sharp Belgian saison might stand up to the heat and engage all the flavours.
Next is the "flavour hook" - the part of
the beer's flavour that directly engages the
flavours in the food. So you may have a
charbroiled steak served with a nicely caramelised brown ale - the caramel flavours of each will link them together.
Another example is seared sea scallops (Coquilles St Jacques) in brown butter. It's a classic dish, often served with an oaky Chardonnay. But a soft mild will often do a better job - the flavours of the caramelised butter and caramelised surface of the scallop pair directly with the caramel flavour in the beer.
Why did you decide to write your book?
Well, there are literally hundreds of such matches. The reason I wrote the book is that we now have 1,500 breweries in the America, and a vibrant, exciting beer culture, but most people were abandoning beer when they sat down to dinner.
Beer is so much more versatile than wine, in that it's far easier to pair with food, even supposedly wine-friendly foods like cheese. And now we have thousands of our own beers, plus hundreds of great international beers.
So I wanted to write a book that would show beer novices and experts alike how to have more fun at dinner.
What can we do to drive beer and food sales in pubs? Should pubs have a beer menu as well as a wine one?
Absolutely. Even though beer is a major profit centre in many pubs, some licensees treat it as an afterthought. There are many great opportunities in a good beer list - even if wine sales are important to your pub, you can still match beers to starters, cheeses and desserts. The result is a higher cheque average and a happier customer. Brewers have to do their part, too.
The British consumer is buying lots of great Belgian and German beer from the supermarkets, yet British brewers stick to only a few British styles. Some more diversity would be more fun for customers and more profitable for brewers and licensees. Glassware is im-
portant too - the classic pint glass does not project a value-added image.
I've hosted more than 500 beer dinners in eight countries, and we've only ever used white-wine glasses. They look good and they're made for tasting worthwhile beverages.
Bottles from Brooklyn Brewery have tasting notes on the labels - should more brewers do this?
Any brewer who isn't thinking about food is missing the boat. Like it or not, the modern pub is becoming a quasi-restaurant. Wine-makers know about food because that's where their bread is buttered.
Increasingly the same is true of the brewer, so failure to understand food could eventually be fatal to some breweries. We can't pretend that it's still the 1970s - people's tastes are far more sophisticated now.
What are the common myths/mistakes when matching food and beer?
Well, one myth would be that beer from a particular country is the best match for its particular food. Indian beer, for example, is uninteresting with good Indian cuisine, which is one of the most complex cuisines on the planet. But German doppelbock is terrific with traditional Mexican food. And any Japanese microbrewer can tell you that German and Belgian wheat beers are better with sushi than Japanese lagers.
Other big trends are cheese and dessert, where beer is markedly superior to wine.
I've done cheese-matching competitions with 15 sommeliers in five countries, and I've never lost. The right beer works better, plain and simple.
What are you working on now?
I've now started work on The Oxford Companion to Beer for Oxford University Press. That will keep me busy for a few years! I'd like to work with Mark Dorber in his new digs at the Anchor in Walberswick, Suffolk.
Beyond that, I would love to do a beer dinner at the Fat Duck. We just did a special beer for the French Laundry in California, with Thomas Keller. So it would be great to work with the folks in Bray.
